Recently I was in a Grade 3/4 classroom discussing the possibility of setting up some new blogs and adding them to the class wiki. As part of the activity we decided to explore the blogs of other students in other schools. My purpose was to have students consider why we blog and to hopefully see their value. One of the student blogs we looked at used an avatar that moved and spoke and looked pretty cool. Thinking I would be teaching something new I asked if the students knew what an avatar was and to my surprise some students not only knew what they were but had created them. A little further probing revealed that they had been taught how to create an avatar by older siblings. It made me wonder what else they knew how to do (many of them knew about myspace and youtube) and once again it forced me to consider the challenge we all have as teachers to keep up with the changes that are occurring in our students lives even as we read this article.

Talk about the Being green activity. Planning with skype